Therapy
by yutamiyu
Summary: A secret harbored over time may lead to destruction.


A/N: Story is post S2 episode "Need To Know," and makes several overt references for S1's "Damned If You Do" (and also one for "Love Hurts").

* * *

She harbors a secret.

It's a small thing, really, and completely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Some days, she thinks her secret is trite, and wants to expunge it immediately and move on--maybe even transcend. Other days she clutches her secret close to her heart, allowing it to define her. On these days, it is all-consuming, and it dictates any actions she takes, no matter how mundane. Most days, she doesn't give it a second thought.

But she is confronted by her secret every morning as she leaves for work. Usually, when she returns, she refuses to confront her secret. Lately, she refuses to acknowledge it at all.

She is surprised to realize that she is not quite sure exactly how old her secret is--she has long since stopped counting the days--but she has harbored it for more than one year, fewer than two.

Her secret rests on a mahogany shelf, positioned in front of a row of books. The wrapping is still almost pristine, though it has lost luster and faded due to nearly-constant exposure. There is a small tear on one of the lower corners from when it accidentally bumped against her keys; there is a thin layer on one side missing from when she purposely tried to open it.

Even now, she isn't entirely sure why she hasn't opened it. There isn't a day when she doesn't see it--and every time she does, she is filled with an obsessive need to know. She has certainly been tempted, more than once, but she always catches herself, somehow knowing that ultimately it's more important to keep her secret in tact.

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He never thanked her for the gloves she'd bought him for Christmas; now, over a year later, she still didn't expect him to. She has yet to see him wear them, and she cannot help but wonder what he's done with them, especially now that the weather has gotten cold. She takes satisfaction in the fact that he acknowledged her thought in the form of his gift to her--which, of course, she will never open.

The card, though, slipped under the ribbon as an afterthought, she'd read immediately upon finding the gift. He hadn't even signed it, simply dashed off a quick note on his computer. Three words. "Thanks. Merry Christmas." It was concise, and completely him.

She has an epiphany while driving to work, and her body switches off, performing automated tasks while her mind speeds frantically into overdrive. She doesn't consciously navigate her usual route to the hospital; instead, she's restructuring the way she lives her life, based only on the revelation of the present.

She will not open his present because to do so would be to admit that the man who had given it to her no longer existed. Whoever he was when he'd left the gift on her desk was gone, replaced by the man who currently served as her employer. He was not now the man she'd met at her interview, and the unwrapped gift was the only tangible reminder she had of the man he'd once been. She keeps the present because it's too painful to revisit her memories.

Because he has not thanked her, she has yet to thank him, because she doesn't quite know how to thank someone for the thoughtful--but still unopened--gift. Besides, she knows that to mention his present prematurely--before he acknowledges it himself--endangers her remembrance or representation of who he used to be--and, she is convinced, the man he could be still.

------------------

For once, she is thankful for the fact that she is always the first of the department to arrive to work; she isn't entirely sure she knows how to face him so soon after her revelation. She has since become more in control of her actions, and she flits around the conference room, preparing the morning coffee and washing out their previously-used coffee mugs.

Everyone has a schedule. She knows that Chase will come in twenty minutes, and Foreman will follow ten minutes later. Her employer, he always varies, but he never fails to arrive either ten minutes before Chase or fifteen minutes after Foreman. Today, she hopes desperately it will be the latter.

She is unlucky in her wishes, as she hears the familiar awkward gait enter the conference room as the last of the water seeps through the beans. He stops right behind her, and she closes her eyes briefly, feeling the heat of his body pressing against hers. She wanted to tremble, to feel his body against hers, if only for one brief moment.

"Fresh coffee?" His voice is low, and she is able to contain most of her shiver. He does not notice, however, as he has already made his way around her form to pluck a recently-washed mug from the sink.

"Dropped the ball on the dishwashing job this morning?" he mocks, shaking drops of water off of the mug and onto the carpet. "Maybe I need to get a new immunologist. You're quickly becoming outdated."

She balls her fingers into tight fists on her hips and bites her bottom lip. She will not give him the satisfaction of a reply. She soon remembers, however, that he is completely incapable of neither tact nor discretion.

"Did I hit a nerve?" His voice is close again, and she closes her eyes. She sees red and white starbursts, and is fairly certain that the small crescent indents she's making in her palms will remain long after Chase and Foreman arrive.

"Don't," she breathes, before she is aware of opening her mouth at all.

She can hear him sipping his coffee, and she keeps her eyes closed. Somehow, she thinks she'll be able to stay collected if she doesn't open her eyes. She can see everything playing out in her head in glorious Technicolor.

"But it's what I do," he counters. "And you love it." Another sip. She imagines him circling her like a vulture, eyes trained on her unmoving, stiff form.

In her mind, he circles again, his gaze blazing. She opens her eyes to meet his.

"Stop it," she says, her voice slowly becoming stronger.

His eyes flash. A smirk pulls at a corner of his mouth. She suddenly wants him to hurt the way she does.

"You don't really want me to stop, do you?" he replies. "You like this. You take whatever I choose to dish out, and you do it with a smile on your face and big brown hopeful eyes. And no matter what I say, you're always back the following morning, making my coffee. It never fails. Sweet, dependable, harmless little Allison Cameron."

"Is that what you think of me?" Stronger still.

"Are you surprised?" he counters. "You're the one who asked me what I thought of you."

She falters, recovers. "That was months ago. And you had a lot to say, then."

"I thought of some more things I wanted to make sure you knew."

He takes another sip. She breaks completely.

She experiences a temporary disconnect as a part of her retreats deep into her memories to protect the image of the man he was supposed to be. Every other part of her focuses on the litany of questions speeding across her mind. Do you care about me at all? Why do you single me out more than Chase or Foreman? If you feel this way about me, why did you give me something for Christmas?

She doesn't realize that she's said the last aloud. She only sees narrowed, calculating eyes as he takes another sip of coffee.

"I didn't get you a present."

She blinks, and again. Her heart stumbles and she feels unbalanced. "You left it on my desk."

"You think I would be considerate enough to buy someone a gift out of nothing other than a feeling of obligation? There's only space for one person there, and Wilson won out this past Christmas. Sorry; maybe next time."

The part of herself that has retreated into her mind comes forward again, and she feels her body regaining equilibrium at the same time her head begins to pound. She closes her eyes to keep the light out.

He shoves the half-empty mug into her hands and leans close to her ear.

"They're just dishes, Cameron," he says, the smirk pulling at his lips again as he draws away from her. "No need to get so melodramatic."

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Her secret greets her as she opens her apartment door. Today is a day she acknowledges its existence, even though she doesn't want to. For the first time in several months, she picks it up. Turns it around n her hands, runs her fingers over the wrapping paper. She digs a thumbnail into one of the tears she left there over a year ago. She can feel it burning into the skin of her palm, and the nerves there twitch in reaction.

She wants to get rid of it--needs to--but she hesitates. The package in her hand is the only tangible thing she has to remind herself of the existence of a man who showed her monster trucks and cotton candy, of a man who comforted her over laboratory equipment, of a man who promised never to crush her. Yet as she closes her eyes all she can picture is the man who circles her in a conference room, the predatory bird to her carrion.

She needs to get rid of it. The image perverts the memories of the man she thought she once knew.

A knock sounds at her door and she perceives it as the sound of wood on wood. She knows the knock; she has heard it in her dreams more often than she can consciously remember. But the sound couldn't possibly be the rapping of his cane against her door, for when she opens it, Wilson stands before her, wearing a painfully familiar pair of fleece-lined black leather gloves to protect his hands from the winter chill outside.

She invites him in, and as he pulls off the gloves and tucks them into his pocket, his eyes fall upon her secret. His mouth pulls into a grim frown.

"House said…" he starts, and sighs. He doesn't know how to begin this. He hopes she'll do it for him.

She picks up her secret, idly running a thumb along one pointed corner. "For the longest time," she says, "I thought…" She looks up at the oncologist standing before her. "Did you know?"

He meets her gaze. "Did I know what?"

"That he didn't give this to me."

He runs a hand over the back of his neck. "Yeah. I know. I did."

------------------

She doesn't want to believe him. She doesn't want to believe that the box in her hands is the result of a witnessed encounter by a third party. She doesn't want to believe that Wilson saw her give her present to her employer, and she definitely does not want to believe that Wilson gave her a gift in return, leading her to believe that it came from the man she once knew.

Wilson's words echo in her head. _I didn't want you to be disappointed. Least of all on Christmas._

He has since left, and she sits on the couch in her living room, staring at this secret on her coffee table.

She wants to hold steadfast to the idea that the man in her memories is the man who left her secret on her desk. But until this very moment, she never considered that the man for whom she currently worked would never be the man of her memories again. It simply had never been an option; the man she now knew would call it foolish optimism.

After all, she had seen glimpses of the man she once knew, and recently. She had ridden on a motorcycle down a stretch of Jersey highway with him. She had listened to him analyze his own father. She had seen him in the eyes of his current self, before the swab came.

But she cannot rely on glimpses alone, not if the man he is now is so determined to exorcise his past self in favor of whatever it is that he has become.

She tears the paper off of the gift and throws it to the side.

She already knows what lies inside; Wilson told her as much before he left. The look of disappointment therefore does not fade from her eyes as she pulls a folded cerulean pashmina scarf from the plain white box.

------------------

The temperature drops overnight and into the morning, and she wears her former secret for the world to see as she walks into the hospital and towards the conference room and her morning routine.

He is there, in his office, fiddling around with something on his computer. His eyes catch her form and he pushes to his feet, hobbling into the conference room as she places her purse on her desk.

He is close to her, again. This time, however, the thrum of pleasure she usually feels is muted. He runs an end of the scarf between his thumb and forefinger, and her shiver is due to neither arousal nor chill. It is as close to disgust as she has ever felt for this man--in either of his personifications.

"It was a gift," she says, and pulls it off of her neck, hanging it in the corner along with her coat. "From a man I thought I once knew." She shakes her head and walks past him and into his office, beginning to sort through the mail she'd neglected the day before.

He is behind her again. "Where's the coffee?"

She does not even bother. Instead, she walks into the conference room, stack of letters in hand, and ungracefully prepares the coffee. She sits at her desk and continues shuffling through office memos and patient referrals. She is not aware of her ears perceiving the sound of him pouring his coffee, of Chase entering the office, of Foreman's subsequent entry. She is not aware that her employer has begun the department's day.

At the moment, her mind is somewhere other than the present. It's with a man she had (until recently) thought would return, someday.


End file.
